Tag Archives: sovereignty

United States

The lessons of failed Confederate foreign policy

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richmond

I write tomorrow for The National Interest that the Confederate States of America lost the American Civil War, 150 years ago this month, in large part because its leaders failed horribly at the diplomatic level to secure allies abroad that would recognize the CSA or even provide the Confederacy with material support:USflag

Though Union forces compelled the surrender of the Confederate army in April 1865, the Confederacy forfeited, by mistake and misfortune, the one potential asset that could have turned the tide much sooner: international recognition from an initially sympathetic Europe. In that regard, the Confederacy lost the war in London and Paris as much as it lost it in Gettysburg and Appomattox.

In particular, the CSA got off to a slow start and, with no Benjamin Franklins or Thomas Jeffersons on its bench, it cycled through three secretaries of state in its first 13 months. Confederate president Jefferson Davis also erred in assuming that European merchants were so dependent on southern cotton that Great Britain and France would assist the Confederacy in its infancy — another fatal assumption.

Though few may necessarily lament the Confederacy’s demise on its sesquicentennial, its failure can still teach us important lessons about the wise conduct of foreign policy today. International diplomacy and outreach made the difference for countries like South Sudan and East Timor; conversely, lack of imagination has hampered countries like Kosovo in its early years, and has otherwise set back Palestinian statehood hopes.

You could imagine that the Tibetan independence movement would be way stronger today in the Dalai Lama hadn’t abandoned the effort in the 1970s. You could also easily imagine that Newfoundland would be an independent country today if the energetic Joey Smallwood hadn’t so strongly boosted confederation with Canada.

Catalan regional president Artur Mas, Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon and the soon-to-be-leader of the Parti québécois, Pierre Karl Péladeau, should take note.

Read it all here.

Canada, Quebec

LIVE-BLOG: Québec leaders debate tonight

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Check in at Suffragio tonight at 8 pm ET for a live-blog of tonight’s leaders debate, the first such debate in Québec’s election campaign. Québec’s voters go to the polls on April 7.Canada Flag IconQuebec Flag Iconpng

(You can read previous coverage of the current Québec election, the Marois government and the 2012 election here).

Update, 8:00 pm: Here we go! The live-blog continues below the jump.

Update, 10:00 pm:  So who won? Who lost?

Liberal leader Philippe Couillard more than held his own in this debate — it’s hard to believe it was his first leadership debate.  He was calm, he was cool, he looked like a premier.  He didn’t refrain from engaging premier Pauline Marois, and he certainly scrapped over several issues, including the PQ’s proposed Charter of Values, Marois’s record on job creation and on Marois’s leadership.

Marois played defense all night long, and not only because she’s defending her existing government.  Her attempts to blame the previous Liberal government of Jean Charest, I think, fell flat — those attacks could have been more effective.  But just about everyone ganged up on Marois tonight, and she was alternatively aggressive and defensively brittle — and that’s even before the debate turned to the sovereignty issue.  It wasn’t her best night.

François Legault obviously believes he has more votes to win from the PQ than from the Liberals — and it showed in the way he went after Marois.  Legault took plenty of shots at Couillard too, especially in trying to defend his image as the clear champion of the private sector in the election.

Françoise David of Québec solidaire was perhaps even more calm and collected than Couillard, and a thoughtful presence on the stage tonight — it’s the same tactic she used in 2012 during the debates, and it largely worked tonight, too.  But she has the luxury of being able to float above the fray because her party’s in fourth place.  Like Legault, she targeted Marois much more than Couillard.  She was particularly effective with her deliberate answers on religious freedom and the Charter, and her attempt to reclaim the sovereignty issue from the PQ.

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the night is how little revolved around the question of sovereignty and Québec independence.  About half of the sovereignty section, which itself ran about 30 to 40 minutes, was devoted to the issue of the Charter.  Also missing from the debate was any mention of Marois’s early attempts to rewrite Bill 101 on the use of French language, which have now fallen by the wayside with the debate over the Charter.

Nothing in tonight’s debate will reverse the growing trend toward the Liberals and away from the PQ.  That doesn’t mean Couillard will certainly be Québec’s premier, but he did nothing tonight to disqualify himself.  Marois’s aggressive defensiveness played poorly to me, and she did nothing to help her cause along undecided voters. David, especially, may have pulled a few voters away from the PQ tonight.  It will be interesting to see if she and Legault, in particular, will focus their aim on Couillard if the Liberals’ polling lead grows even further over the next week or two.

Continue reading LIVE-BLOG: Québec leaders debate tonight →

Canada, Quebec

Péladeau candidacy transforms Québec provincial elections

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peladeau

When Québec premier Pauline Marois called a snap election earlier this month, the conventional wisdom was virtually certain on two points: that Marois’s sovereigntist Parti québécois (PQ) would win a majority government and that the election would turn on the Marois government’s introduction of the Charte de la laïcité (Quebec Charter of Values). Quebec Flag IconpngCanada Flag Icon

Less than two weeks later, one poll today shows that the PQ is actually trailing the more centrist, federalist Parti libéral du Québec (Liberal Party, or PLQ).  The CROP/La Presse poll finds that the PLQ would win 39% of the vote, the PQ would win 36%, and François Legault’s struggling, center-right, ‘soft’ sovereigntist Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) would win just 13%.  Québec solidaire, the more leftist, sovereigntist alternative, wins 10%.  The PQ still leads among Francophones by a margin of 43% to 30%, though the Liberals win 71% of Anglophones.  Far from winning a majority government, Marois could actually lose her minority government if the Liberals keep gaining strength.

What’s more, the emergence of former Quebecor CEO Pierre Karl Péladeau (pictured above, left, with Marois) as a PQ candidate fundamentally transformed the election’s focus away from the cultural issues surrounding the religious freedom debate and the Charter of Values — and toward the issue of Québécois independence.  Right now, that’s working to the benefit of Liberals, because a majority of Québec voters today oppose independence.

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RELATED: Marois calls snap election with eye on Québécois separatist majority

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Péladeau, when he announced his candidacy last Sunday for the PQ, surprised everyone by declaring his strong support for Québec’s independence.  That took the focus off Marois’s Charter of Values and put it squarely on whether Marois will call a referendum if the PQ wins a majority government on April 7.  Marois herself spent last week musing about an independent Québec,  including post-succession monetary policy and retaining the Canadian dollar.

That made it look as if Péladeau is more in control of the PQ campaign than Marois, thereby undermining Québec’s sitting premier. This week, with the PQ’s poll numbers declining, Marois is now trying to avoid talking about the sovereignty issue and limit the damage from her star candidate’s outspoken entry into provincial politics.

The idea was that Péladeau, as a well-known businessman, would give the PQ more credibility on economic policy, thereby peeling away some of the more economically conservative voters that previously supported Legault and the CAQ in the last election — and maybe even some Liberals.

Instead, all the talk about sovereignty and independence has given Liberal Party leader Philippe Coulliard an opportunity to frame himself as the candidate talking about ‘real issues,’ including his plans to cut taxes while also cutting spending in order to balance the province’s budget.  Polling data from the past week suggests that former CAQ voters are moving to the Liberals instead of to the PQ.  What’s more, the conservatism of Péladeau as the PQ’s top candidate seems to be pushing some PQ voters toward supporting Québec solidaire instead.  Continue reading Péladeau candidacy transforms Québec provincial elections →

Canada, Quebec, Romania

Québec votes today

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Canada’s only French-speaking and second-largest province goes to the polls today to elect the 125-member Assemblée nationale — Quebec’s politics are a fascinating subset of Canadian politics (notwithstanding the fact that the election will likely have a minimal impact on federal Canadian politics).

Rather than try to provide my own rundown and projection, I’ll leave it to Éric Grenier of ThreeHundredEight: his ridiculously detailed (and amazing) projection calls for a majority government led by the leftist, sovereigntist Parti québécois (PQ), although just barely.

Polls show three top parties since premier Jean Charest announced snap elections and kicked off the campaign on August 1:

  • Charest’s own Parti libéral du Québec (Liberal Party, or PLQ) — Charest has governed the province since 2003, and the Liberals are seeking their fourth consecutive mandate in the face of charges of corruption (the Charbonneau Commission is looking into whether the government traded construction contracts in exchange for political financing) and a government that’s not done enough to boost the economy, despite a flashy plan to develop northern Québec.
  • The PQ, led by Pauline Marois, which is looking to return to provincial government after nearly a decade.
  • The Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ), led by François Legault, which was formed just last year and which lies vaguely to the right of the PLQ, although not in every way, and which lies somewhere between the sovereigntism of the PQ and the federalism of the PLQ (Legault, a former PQ minister, once supported the 1995 referendum on Québec’s independence, but has said any CAQ government will not pursue a new referendum).  The CAQ’s recruitment of quality candidates has been a boost, none of which more so than former Montréal police chief Jacques Duchesneau, whose presence in the election has been a constant reminder of potential PLQ corruption.

Grenier forecasts 63 seats for the PQ, just 33 seats for the Liberals and 27 for the CAQ.  If true, it would be a bloodbath for Charest’s Liberals, who would stand a chance of being pushed not only out of government, but into third place (while the CAQ becomes the Official Opposition) — it would likely also mean that Charest himself would lose his seat in Sherbrooke, a district where he’s been winning elections since 1984.

Roughly speaking, the PLQ is expected to hold its own in Montréal and its suburbs, where most of the province’s anglophones live (although they comprise 10% or so of the electorate, English-speakers tend to vote en masse for the Liberals, even though there are signs that some may be considering the CAQ).  The CAQ is expected to do well around Québec City further north, and the PQ is expected to do well everywhere else.

A key question will be whether two smaller more radically leftists and sovereigntist parties, Québec solidaire (whose spokeswoman Françoise David performed well in the party leaders debate) and Option nationale, succeed in taking away votes form the PQ — Marois has tread very lightly on the sovereignty issue, making it clear that she’s more interested in governing the province than arranging another referendum.

Increasingly less important over the course of the campaign has been the tuition fee issue — student protests over tuition hikes that shut down Montréal universities, and Charest’s police-heavy (some might say unconstitutionally repressive) response, brough international attention last spring.  Despite Marois’s opposition to tuition hikes and a high-profile PQ candidate in 20-year-old student leader Léo Bureau-Blouin, the issue has not had the salience you might have expected just a few months ago.

I am traveling most of Tuesday, but hopefully will have some brief thoughts much later tonight when we have an idea of which party — PLQ, PQ or CAQ — has won the most seats and whether they’ll command enough seats to have a majority government.

In the meanwhile, a little Céline Dion to help set the election day mood, and of course you can follow all of Suffragio‘s coverage of the election here.

À bientôt!

Canada, Quebec

Will Québec solidaire break through in next Tuesday’s election?

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When Québec’s major party leaders gathered a few days ago for the only multi-party debate in advance of the election for Québec’s Assemblée nationale on Sept. 4, voters saw three familiar faces: Jean Charest, leader of the Parti libéral du Québec (Liberal Party, or PLQ) and the province’s premier since 2003; Pauline Marois, leader of the sovereigntist Parti québécois (PQ), and François Legault, a former PQ minister and leader of the newly-formed and more center-right Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ).

They also saw a less familiar face: Québec solidaire spokeswoman Françoise David who, along with spokesman Amir Khadir, are the two “spokespersons” for Québec solidaire, a stridently leftist, environmentalist, feminist and sovereigntist party founded in 2006 when several smaller parties merged.

David wasn’t a wholly outsized presence in that debate, but to the extent it was David’s first introduction to many Québec voters, her above-the-fray tone seemed to make a favorable impression.

David and Québec solidaire are, by far, the most leftwing and anti-neoliberal of the four parties (and party leaders) featured in last week’s debates:

  • On student fees, not only does David oppose tuition increases for students, but was the only party leader to wear a red square — the symbol of student protesters — on stage (even though Marois wore it in solidarity with students last spring and has come out strongly in opposition to tuition hikes).
  • On the environment, David has criticized Charest’s Plan Nord, designed to boost mining and other economic efforts in northern Québec, and her party is downright hostile to Québec’s asbestos industry (Québec is essentially the only main producer of asbestos in North America and Europe).
  • On sovereignty, Québec solidaire is firmly in favor of an independent Québec, in contrast to theMONDAY’S PIECE> nuanced “wait and see” approach that Marois has taken.

Continue reading Will Québec solidaire break through in next Tuesday’s election? →

Canada, Quebec

Sovereigntist party runs away from sovereignty issue in Québec election

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The last time Québec held a referendum on independence in 1995, Jacques Parizeau (pictured above in 1995) was the leader of the sovereigntist Parti québécois (PQ).

With just over a week to go until Québec votes on Sept. 4 for a new Assemblée nationale, Parizeau, in a sharp rebuke to PQ leader Pauline Marois, endorsed the smaller, more stridently sovereigntist Option nationale, a party formed in 2011 by former PQ legislator  Jean-Martin Aussant.  His move comes with polls showing the PLQ and the PQ see-sawing in the 30% to 35% range for the lead in the election

Marois took the news gracefully, but the Globe and Mail reports that the Parizeau’s snub could jeopardize Marois’s effort to win power.  Normally, it doesn’t speak well of a party leader when a former party leader endorses a rival.

In this instance, I’m not sure that it harms Marois.  To the contrary, it emphasizes the not-so-subtle secret of Marois’s PQ leadership: she’s more interested in forming a government than pushing sovereignty.  That’s the very compliant Aussant aired when he formed Option nationale.

If she wins the election, which is as much a referendum on Charest and his government than anything else, it will be because she has emphasized any number of issues — corruption, strengthening education and health care, promoting Québec industry — to the relative exclusion of sovereignty. Continue reading Sovereigntist party runs away from sovereignty issue in Québec election →

Canada, Quebec

Live-blogging the Québec debates: Marois v. Legault

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I’ll be live-blogging tonight’s debate — the third and final debate of a series of one-on-one debates — between Pauline Marois, leader of the leftist, sovereigntist Parti québécois (PQ) and François Legault, leader of the newly formed, sort-of maybe center-right Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ).       

Sunday night featured a four-way debate, Monday night featured a raucous one-on-one between Marois and premier Jean Charest, the leader of the centrist, federalist Parti libéral du Québec (Liberal Party, or PLQ), and Tuesday night featured a debate between Legault and Charest.

Québec’s voters go to polls on September 4 to choose 125 members of Québec’s Assemblée nationale.

Read Suffragio’s prior coverage of the Québécois election here.

So that’s a wrap. Marois is queen of the status quo, Legault is the queen of the caribou. Oy. On to Sept. 4.

What’s striking is that they spent so little time bringing down Charest tonight. I wonder if that was a strategic mistake for both Legault and Marois, especially with today’s Forum poll showing the PLQ with a renewed 35% lead over the PQ (29%) and the CAQ (24%). In any event. Full live blog after the jump.

* * * *  Continue reading Live-blogging the Québec debates: Marois v. Legault →

Canada, Quebec

Live-blogging the Québec debates: Charest v. Legault

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I’ll be live-blogging tonight’s hourlong debate — the second in a series of three one-on-one debates — between Québec premier Jean Charest, the leader of the centrist, federalist Parti libéral du Québec (Liberal Party, or PLQ) and François Legault, leader of the newly formed, sort-of maybe center-right Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ).

Sunday night featured a four-way debate and last night featured a raucous one-on-one between Charest and Pauline Marois, the leader of the leftist, sovereigntist Parti québécois (PQ).  Tomorrow’s final debate will feature Marois and Legault, and Wednesday will bring showcase Marois and Legault.

Given Charest’s feisty, aggressive tone against Marois last night, I expect to see the same against Legault, who himself is a former PQ minister.  Legault left the PQ to form the CAQ late last year, and I would expect Charest to make the argument that Legault is a closet sovereigntist and that the CAQ has been too vague about its plans for government.  I expect you’ll also see Charest attack Legault for cuts made to Québec’s health care system — Legault once served as minister for health and social services under PQ premier Bernard Landry from 2001 to 2003.

Québec’s voters go to polls on September 4 to choose 125 members of Québec’s Assemblée nationale.

Read Suffragio’s prior coverage of the Québécois election here.

Well, it was another exciting debate and the last debate for Charest.

Charest managed to come across as a little less aggressive tonight, but perhaps a little more effective — he could point (and he did!) to Legault’s past experience in government and contrast it with the (unreliable?) positions Legault has taken as the leader of the CAQ.

Legault seemed more effective, perhaps, than he did on Sunday night, but seemed less sure throughout the night.  He’s not as good a debater as Charest.

I wonder if Legault’s strong defense of French and Bill 101 at the end of the debate will leave a bad taste in anglophone voters’ mouths — he’ll need those if the CAQ is to win the election.

All in all, I think Charest did a strong job defending his government and an even stronger job attacking the CAQ’s platform (or the slipperiness of the platform vis-a-vis Legault’s record).

Full live-blog after the jump.

* * * *  Continue reading Live-blogging the Québec debates: Charest v. Legault →

Canada, Quebec

Live-blogging the Québec debates: Charest v. Marois

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I’ll be (hopefully — giving my French quite a test!) live-blogging tonight’s hourlong debate between Québec’s premier since 2003, Jean Charest, the leader of the centrist, federalist Parti libéral du Québec (Liberal Party, or PLQ) and Pauline Marois, the leader of the leftist, sovereigntist Parti québécois (PQ). 

Last night featured a four-way debate, tomorrow will see a debate between Charest and François Legault, leader of the newly formed Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ), and Wednesday will bring the final debate between Marois and Legault.  Québec’s voters go to polls on September 4 to choose 125 members of Québec’s Assemblée nationale

Read Suffragio’s prior coverage of the Québécois election here.

So that was exciting! Jean Charest, so smiley in the Sunday night debate, sneered throughout tonight’s debate.  Whether on corruption, on tuition fees, on Plan Nord, on debt, on sovereignty, Charest went on the offensive all night long in a very aggressive manner (“Madame Marois! Madame MAROIS!”).

I’m not sure that will play so well with viewers, but it’s clear there’s no love lost here and that Charest knows he’s behind, and that he’s going to have to fight back against both the PQ and the CAQ in order to win the election.

Marois looked poised and more measured, even when playing offense.  But her party still has no clear competing budget plan, and she’s still not being clear on whether she’s seek a referendum if the PQ wins in two weeks.

I’m not sure whether the debate will have changed any minds — Charest looked angry and evasive and aggressive, and Marois still has no answer when it comes to the biggest doubt voters have about her party winning office.

Tomorrow night, we’ll see Charest and Legault — if anything, Charest has been more aggressive in his attacks on Legault in the past week or so, so I think it’s very likely we’ll see the fully adversarial Charest tomorrow as well.

Full live blog below the jump.

* * * *  Continue reading Live-blogging the Québec debates: Charest v. Marois →

Canada, Quebec

Charest comes out swinging in first Québec debate

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The party leaders of each of the four main political parties in Québec held their first debate Sunday in advance of the province’s September 4 election, with three additional one-on-one debates to follow tonight, Tuesday and Wednesday.

It’s always difficult to tell whether debates will change the dynamic of an election campaign, and it’s no different in this election.

Going into the debate, it was expected that the leader with the biggest target would be Jean Charest (pictured above, second to left), the leader of the centrist, federalist Parti libéral du Québec (Liberal Party, or PLQ) and premier of Québec since 2003.

The PLQ, according to recent polls, is struggling against the leftist, sovereigntist Parti québécois (PQ), and the new sorta-center-right-ish, sorta autonomous-ish Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) is polling an increasingly strong third place — a poll released Friday night showed the PQ with 35% to just 30% for the Liberals and 25% for the CAQ.  Most ominously, the poll shows that for the first time, anglophone voters are not supporting the Liberals en masse: although the Liberals still lead among non-francophone voters with 62% to just 20% for the CAQ, that result marks a fairly staggering loss for a party that normally has a monopoly on native English speakers, which comprise 10% of the Québécois electorate.

So on Sunday night, it was thought that PQ leader Pauline Marois (pictured above, second to right) and CAQ leader François Legault (pictured above, far left), as well as spokeswoman for the far-left Québec solidaire, Françoise David (pictured above, far right) would all target Charest — on his record on tuition fees, on a damaging and ongoing corruption inquiry, on his controversial plan to develop northern Québec.

That quite didn’t happen, as Marois and Legault and David targeted one another — and an aggressive Charest went on the offensive against both Maoris and Legault.  For example, he went directly at Marois and Legault for supporting cuts in the PQ-led administration of the 1990s (Legault is a former PQ minister), he attached the PQ for its past corruption scandals and he went directly on the attack on the issue of sovereignty:

Mr. Charest charged that the PQ’s main objective will be to achieve sovereignty and hold a referendum “as quickly as possible. She has set up a committee to achieve it,” he warned.

Tonight, Charest will face off in a one-on-one debate against Marois.  Tuesday night will feature Charest and Legault, while Wednesday night will feature Marois and Legault.

The French-language La Presse‘s recap and the English-language Montréal Gazette‘s recap largely concurred: Continue reading Charest comes out swinging in first Québec debate →

Canada, Quebec

Newly-formed third party CAQ rises in Québec

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A new poll out in Québec Friday from Leger Marketing shows an increasingly three-way race in advance of the snap September 4 election.

The two longstanding parties in Québec are essentially tied.  The sovereigntist (and more leftist) Parti québécois (PQ) wins 32% of Québécois voters, while the federalist (and more centrist) Parti libéral du Québec (Liberal Party, or PLQ) of premier Jean Charest wins 31%.  Charest, who has led Québec since 2003, is seeking his fourth consecutive mandate.

But the real surprise is the newly-formed Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ), which got 27% — although the CAQ led polls briefly when it was formed in January 2012, it had steadily lost support.

And, perhaps, for good reason — it’s a relatively aimless group that has been vague about its position on key issues, such as a proposed hike in student tuition fees.  It’s been just as cagey on more fundamental stands: whether its economic program is right or left, or whether it is more sovereigntist or federalist.

Founded by François Legault (pictured above, left), a longtime minister in the PQ governments of the 1990s and a leader of the pro-independence movement in the 1995 sovereignty referendum, the CAQ incorporates some other PQ stragglers and much of the old Action démocratique du Québec, the party led by Mario Dumont that made significant gains in the 2007 Québec election (only to watch those gains evaporate in the subsequent 2008 election).

Yet there’s precedent from recent Québécois elections to indicate that voters are weary of both the Liberals and the PQ:

  • As noted, in 2007, Mario Dumont’s ADQ won 41 seats to Québec’s 125-seat Assemblée nationale, leaving Charest’s Liberals with a 48-seat minority government and pushing the PQ (with just 36 seats) out as the official opposition.
  • In the 2011 general election, the progressive New Democratic Party won 59 of Québec’s 75 ridings for seats in the House of Commons.  The NDP, led by the late Jack Layton, had previously not been a factor in Québec’s federal elections; in 2011, it reduced the PQ’s federal counterpart, the Bloc québécois to just four seats, despite its domination of Québec’s federal delegation since 1993.

Like the ADQ in 2007, the CAQ is leading polls in and around Québec City.  But also like in 2007, anglophone Quebeckers are still overwhelmingly in favor of the Liberals, the PQ has a steady lead among francophone voters, and the CAQ lags behind both parties in and around Montréal.  That result would lead to three-way deadlock that favors a minority Liberal government — unless the CAQ can somehow break through to the core supporters of either the PQ or the Liberals.

Two recent developments indicate that the CAQ could pull off that kind of upset.

Legault has emphasized the recruitment of high-profile candidates, which paid off last week when popular anti-corruption figure and former Montréal police chief Jacques Duchesneau (pictured above, right) announced last week that he would stand as a candidate for the CAQ.  That put Charest on the defensive — his government is under investigation for corruption charges related to tying government construction contracts to political cash.  Meanwhile, prominent anglophone Quebecker Robert Libman gave his support to the CAQ and trashed Charest for using scare tactics against the CAQ.

But the election remains three weeks away and it’s unclear if the CAQ may be surging too soon — to say nothing of whether voters trust Legault and his slippery platform enough to make him premier.

Continue reading Newly-formed third party CAQ rises in Québec →

Canada, Quebec

Sovereigntist PQ leader Marois walks a fine line on tuition fees in Québec

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The day after Jean Charest, Québec’s premier, launched a snap election for September 4, his principal rival, Pauline Marois, came out in clear contrast to Charest on perhaps the most high-profile issues in the election (short of Québec’s sovereignty): tuition hike fees for students.

Marois (pictured above, right), the leader of the leftist, sovereigntist Parti québécois (PQ), promised to take a radically different approach to tuition fees in the province: cancel the planned hikes, revoke the controversial emergency protest law (Bill 78) and convene a summit within 100 days of election on the issue of university funding.

While Marois is taking a very understated position on Québécois sovereignty and any future referendum on an independent Québec, she is not shying away from embracing a contrast to Charest on the student tuition issue.  Indeed, one of the most impressive and eloquent of the student leaders from those negotiations, Léo Bureau-Blouin (pictured above, left), at age 20, is among the PQ’s marquee candidates in the upcoming election — he’ll be running against a junior minister in Charest’s government in a riding in Laval, a suburb of Montréal.

Earlier this year, a battle between Charest’s government and student protesters ended in somewhat chaotic protests throughout Montréal.  Students protested the hikes, which amounted to a $1,625 increase over seven years — a 75% increase over what Québec students pay today (although the total would be far less than what students in other Canadian provinces pay).  Ultimately, Charest’s education minister, Line Beauchamp, resigned over the impasse with student leaders in negotiations over the hikes, and Charest’s current education minister is not running for reelection.

Charest responded to the protests by passing Bill 78, which makes any gathering of over 50 people illegal unless they tell police in advance the start time, finish time and route of such gathering.  Although the bill is just a temporary measure, expiring on July 1, 2013, it brought international condemnation as an unconstitutional restraint on protesters’ rights.

With the protests dying as summer approached, however, the issued faded in both provincial and international headlines.

Polls have shown that Québec’s electorate is essentially even — they may not like the increasingly heavy-handed approach that Charest took with protesters, but nor were they especially keen on protester shutting down schools (not to mention entire neighborhoods) in Montréal.

So it’s not without some risk that Marois has embraced the student movement — by doing so, she is hoping to energize Québec’s young voters and otherwise capitalize on doubts about the Charest government’s effectiveness without alienating other voters who support Charest’s approach and who take a wary view of the student protests.

Charest, who has been premier since 2003, is looking to win a fourth consecutive mandate for his federalist, centrist Parti libéral du Québec (Liberal Party, or PLQ).  Polls show the PLQ and the PQ tied for first place, with the center-right Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) polling a strong enough third place to make it likely that Québec’s next government will be a minority government.

Canada, Quebec

Charest makes it official: Québec goes to the polls September 4

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Jean Charest, Québec’s premier since 2003 (pictured above), has dissolved his province’s Assemblée nationale and called a snap election for September 4 — just 33 days away.

His Parti libéral du Québec (Liberal Party, or PLQ) will be seeking its fourth consecutive mandate and Charest will be leading the PLQ for the fifth consecutive time since 1998, when he first left Canadian federal politics for Québecois provincial politics.  He’s been a decade-long fixture of the province’s government, and he starts out the race with even odds at best.

His main opposition is the sovereigntist (and leftist) Parti québécois (PQ), who leader, Pauline Marois, makes Charest look like a star campaigner.

But further to the right is former PQ minister François Legault, whose Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ), a new center-right party formed only earlier this year, will attempt to pull votes from both the PQ and the PLQ.  Further to the left, Québec solidaire will also attempt to pull seats from the PQ and, to a lesser extent, the PLQ.

So what are the starting positions for the parties? Continue reading Charest makes it official: Québec goes to the polls September 4 →